


In Palest Ink

by qthelights



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Writing on Skin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-21
Updated: 2008-10-21
Packaged: 2017-10-30 07:05:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/329081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qthelights/pseuds/qthelights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The palest ink is better than the sharpest memory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Palest Ink

_“The palest ink is better than the sharpest memory” ~ Chinese Proverb_

 

Ianto keeps a pen hidden in Jack’s pillowcase. If Jack knows that it’s there, he has never mentioned it.

On the mornings that Ianto wakes up and Jack is blessedly asleep next to him, arm draped possessively over Ianto’s stomach, breathing deep and even, Ianto sneaks his fingers into the folds of his pillowcase. His fingers curl around the plastic, warmed by the heat of their sleep, and he draws it out achingly slow so as not to wake Jack.

Ianto thumbs the lid off the pen gently, allowing it to slip into his palm. He pauses, makes certain Jack is still asleep before he touches it feather-light to Jack’s warm skin.

It depends on how they sleep as to where Ianto makes his mark. When they wake up cuddled together, Jack wrapped steady and sure around Ianto, it is hardest because he has to hide the mark in an obvious place. 

Usually, he puts the tiny blue dot, so light it might not be seen if you didn’t know where to look, in the slight crease of Jack’s inner elbow. It’s a risky spot, but Ianto assumes (hopes) that Jack doesn’t have time to pay attention to the minutiae of the marks on his skin. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t.

It’s easier when he wakes and he is the one enveloping Jack, his breath warm and moist against the hair at the nape of Jack’s neck. He likes the scent of Jack there and buries his nose in the fine hairs as he drifts off to sleep. Those mornings he has an easier time with the pen. It’s easy to make a little blue dot in the hairline, or, if he’s feeling daring (needy), a stronger one just behind Jack’s ear.

It’s only happened once (or twice) that Jack has woken up at the tickle and Ianto has covered his actions by pressing his warm lips to the shell of Jack’s ear, as his hand tucks the pen safely under the covers. Jack turns over and grins a sleepy, ‘Ianto,’ before his brain sizzles and pops into alertness and he twists in Ianto’s arms to pin him to the bed and ravish them both awake.

The mornings when Ianto wakes up alone, which he notes (and doesn’t analyse) seem to be getting rarer, Ianto has to change to Plan B. When he brings Jack his coffee with a brief (non-girly) kiss to his temple, he conceals a pen in his shirt sleeve (carefully, so as not to stain) and scratches his fingers through Jack’s hair. It makes Jack murmur happily and Ianto only feels slightly guilty that he disguises the quick flick of the pen tip with his fingernails. It comes out as a little line, messy and haphazard, a tiny blue splinter in Jack’s hair.

It always feels just a little bit stupid, (sometimes a lot), when he goes through this little ritual in the harsh light of day. Well, the harsh fluorescence of the hub. He does it all the same.

At night, when a day of alien-hunting and world-saving has been completed and they’ve dropped wearily into Jack’s bed, Ianto looks for the spot he made earlier.

On the days when he finds the mark, he breathes a sigh of quiet relief, easily slipping it in among sweeter sighs of Jack’s making. He licks his thumb surreptitiously and gently rubs the ink off Jack’s skin, marred no longer. Tangling his limbs with Jack’s he kisses him softly, wonders about the tiny quirk at the corner of Jack’s lips (ignores it). Their skin is warm and the caresses gentle, unhurried. 

A hitch in Jack’s breathing (or was it his?) signals an end to submersion and their movements grow erratic as they slowly grind against each other. Ianto comes almost silently, laboured breath, tensed muscle and the warm spill between them the only ways Jack knows. Jack buries his face into Ianto’s throat, mouth open and breath hot, muffling the sounds of his own orgasm in tendons and sweat-laced skin. They sleep soon after, wake wrapped in each other.

Then there are the other days, when Ianto can’t find the speck of ink he marked on Jack that morning. He double-checks (perhaps it was the other elbow, the other ear) but doesn’t find it. 

The ink is barely skin deep, but it is enough. It coats cells in the dermal layer, irritates and changes. Cells which regenerate cleansed of the navy poison.

Those are the days when Jack died. 

On those days Ianto pushes down the heavy feeling of dread in his stomach. Jack came back, he reminds himself, he is _here_. Though he doesn’t make the correlation (chooses not to) Ianto is more aggressive when he cannot find the pen’s mark. Their hands are insistent, roaming, grabbing, claiming. Cataloguing. The sex is hard, and fast. Controlled by neither, the one on top determined by position at the moment it becomes too much and one of them pushes in, slick and needy. It becomes a race of heartbeats and thrusts; faster, deeper, desperate. Ianto tries to wait and let Jack come first, which he does with a growl that reverberates deep in his chest. When Ianto comes it’s with a strangled cry.

They lie on top of each other, chests heaving, lungs demanding air. These nights are often the ones when Ianto wakes alone, though not always. Later, he will make a note in his diary. A running tally of endless life and disappearing ink. He knows it’s probably pointless. Jack will live forever. Probably. 

But he marks them down carefully, precisely, and in neat handwriting. Just in case. It won’t stop the lurch in his chest each time he can’t find the stain of blue, but it’s something. A reminder, a promise, a prayer. Something. It doesn’t occur to him that every dot also marks a day that he has lived, another day closer to the one where _he_ will die.

Sometimes he thinks the pale faded ink spot is in a different spot to where he left it, slightly to the left, or smudged, just a little. He knows it’s his imagination.

Ianto keeps a pen hidden in Jack’s pillowcase. Jack knows it’s there, and he’ll never say a word.


End file.
